


Watched for all the right reasons

by Jessa_yeah



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (self)objectification, Beauty - Freeform, Body Image, Character Study, Disability, Disfigurement, F/F, F/M, Gen, Lavender Browns lives AU, Misogyny, Werewolf Lavender Brown, bisexual lavender, femmeslash, the trauma of being treated like your beauty is your whole worth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:07:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27717926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessa_yeah/pseuds/Jessa_yeah
Summary: Being beautiful had once been a large part of Lavender’s life. AU wherein Lavender Brown lives on after the Battle of Hogwarts - as a werewolf.
Relationships: Lavender Brown/Parvati Patil, Lavender Brown/Ron Weasley
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	Watched for all the right reasons

Being beautiful had once been a large part of Lavender’s life. There was much more to her than a pretty face, of course, had always been; a fierce love for her friends and pets alike, little creative projects, occasional acts of brazen bravery, a deep interest in magic and deviation and charms. Yet, much of her time and attention in her early teenage years had been devoted to tending to her beauty. Hours in front of the mirror carefully applying layer after layer of mascara; testing and matching new shades of lipgloss; brushing and charming her curls until they shone and bounced around her face in an almost-natural way. Sometimes, when the image in the mirror blinked back at her and Parvati smiled at her and people gawked over her, she almost _felt_ beautiful.

Even back then, she had sometimes wondered why she cared so much. 

Dolores Umbridge came to Hogwarts in fifth year, with her sticky-sweet words, manicured nails and cruel punishments. Lavender was enraged. How dare she hide prejudice behind a pink-lipstick smile; how dare she cause humiliation and pain within her neat little office with its framed cat pictures upon the walls. Make-up shouldn’t mask the ugliness within; that’s not how it was supposed to work, though how it was supposed to work, Lavender didn’t quite know either. She firmly bound back her curls, joined Dumbledore’s Army and didn’t mind when the first scars littered her skin.

In her sixth year Lavender got a boyfriend, but Ron didn’t quite make her feel beautiful either. She felt the same person, just with a boyfriend to whisper sweet words and snuggle and snog with (which admittedly was nice) - still watched, still judged for real or imagined imperfections, maybe even more now than before. The rest of sixth year brought a rather dramatic break-up, Death Eaters loose within the very walls of Hogwarts and more scars and nightmare material. During her seventh year, Lavender was too busy surviving to worry much about her appearance. Beauty had become a comfort ritual; applying eye shadow in front of a broken mirror in stolen moments, curled up with Parvati in a corner of the Room, plaiting each other’s hair. Being watched was now a threat, a danger, or a distraction to keep cruel eyes from younger targets - but it wasn’t anymore about whether her figure looked slim enough in that dress. Slim figures were easier to grab and snap in two. 

It’s an empty quest, the haunt for beauty, because it offers you nothing. It has no end goal. It’s never enough. And after something happens completely beyond your control, let’s say a werewolf attack, the title could (would) be taken from you without any remorse. Lavender had been a pretty child, a beautiful teenager, she knew that now. She had albums filled with photos, countless memories to account for it - of being cooed over by her family, being chided for bruised knees and torn clothes and messy hair, endless eyes on her in envy or admiration. In her twenties, she was a war veteran with a limp in her walk, turning into a grotesque monster every month. And now, finally, she _felt_ beautiful - worth to be looked at, to be listened to, to be loved. She met with Bill Weasley for Saturday beach strolls - for as far as her injured leg would carry her. She gathered her friends around her for lunches, for parties, for press conferences at the Ministry, where she worked as a junior civil lawyer, cameras pointed at her. Parvati watched her and saw her, loved her for all that she was. 

You can only win a war if you choose to fight. You can only get scarred if you survive. Lavender refused to be ashamed of either. If people were more comfortable with a dead unmarked girl than with a disfigured alive one, well, that was their problem. They would only need to talk with Dennis Creevey or Andromeda Black or any of the too many others with hearts more torn than Lavender’s face to know there are much worse things than the loss of a pretty face. Lavender clutched Parvati’s hand in busy city streets and met the stares and hastily averted gazes with a lifted chin, challenging them. Look harder. Look deeper. Do you see me? Do you know what I’ve been through? What I did to save lives? Her lipgloss grin on her scar-scattered face was brighter than ever before. 

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspirered to write this fic by a tumblr post about the lack of female werewolves in media. Apparently I have a lot of Thoughts about beauty, (self)objectification and the act of looking floating around my head - they came pouring out of me while writing this. I hope you enjoyed reading it! As always, if you do, kudos and a comment are much appreciated. You can also find me on tumblr as thefisherqueen.


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